The complement system is a principal bastion of innate immunity designed to combat a myriad of existing as well as newly emerging pathogens. Since viruses are obligatory intracellular parasites, they are continuously exposed to host complement assault and, therefore, have imbibed various strategies to subvert it. One of them is molecular mimicry of the host complement regulators. Large DNA viru...

PURPOSE OF REVIEW The last few years have seen a huge increase in our understanding of the role of the complement system and its regulation in glomerular disease. Our aim is to summarize the most important advances in this field. RECENT FINDINGS The role of complement in systemic lupus erythematosus continues to be elucidated. Classical pathway components protect from the development of autoi...

Complement component C4 is a central protein in the classical and lectin pathways within the complement system. During activation of complement, its major fragment C4b becomes covalently attached to the surface of pathogens and altered self-tissue, where it acts as an opsonin marking the surface for removal. Moreover, C4b provides a platform for assembly of the proteolytically active convertase...

We describe our research toward building systems that include a complex, multi-state model of human dynamic behavior. This can allow us to predict human behavior over short periods of time, in order to create control systems that intelligently complement the human's action. To accomplish this requires inferring the internal state of the human, and then correctly adapting the remainder of the sy...

The complement system is well known as an enzyme cascade that helps to defend against infections. Indeed, this ancestral system bridges innate and adaptive immunity. Its implication in diseases of the central nervous system (CNS), has led to an increased number of studies. Complement activation in the CNS has been generally considered to contribute to tissue damage. However, recent studies sugg...

As a first step to validate the use of carbon nanotubes as novel vaccine or drug delivery devices, their interaction with a part of the human immune system, complement, has been explored. Haemolytic assays were conducted to investigate the activation of the human serum complement system via the classical and alternative pathways. Western blot and sodium dodecyl sulphate-polyacrylamide gel elect...

We report the effect of chemical modification of multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWNTs) on their activation of the human serum complement system, as well as the adsorption of human plasma proteins on MWNTs. Four different types of chemically-modified MWNTs were tested for complement activation via the classical and alternative pathways using haemolytic assays. Human plasma protein binding was al...

The brain is considered to be an immune privileged site, because the blood-brain barrier limits entry of blood borne cells and proteins into the central nervous system (CNS). As a result, the detection and clearance of invading microorganisms and senescent cells as well as surplus neurotransmitters, aged and glycated proteins, in order to maintain a healthy environment for neuronal and glial ce...